ALTER EGO

Alter Ego

Alter Ego

Introduction

The concept of alter ego is prominent in the literary artworks, especially of early and mid twentieth century. Many authors postulated the dual character personality or individuals symbolizing multiple personality traits to present the key aspects of the story. It creates ambiguity for the reader at many places to derive meaning from a specific concept. However, it leads to explaining the fundamentals of key aspects that affect the story plot of the content. At many places, criticism defines the expression of perception and personality of the story character. This paper analyzes the alter ego of the main character of fiction novel Miss Lonely Hearts. It also presents the importance of the alter ego and how author merged the approach to alter ego development within the selected piece of art.

Context Development: Content Overview

Miss Lonelyhearts, a pure narrative work of fiction, written by Nathanael West. It is the second novel of Nathanael West that published in 1933. The concept presented in the work highlights the expressionist black comedy. The story presents the conceptual perspective of Great depression age. The era in which “Miss Lonelyhearts” was written, considered as one of those periods in which severe economic crisis appeared in American economy (Barnard, 1995). Along with it, conflict state between countries was also creating a stressful situation for citizens. Nathanael West got the inspiration to write on the topic from his friend; he showed him agonized, dismal, and pathetic letters he received for his column Brooklyn Eagle. Miss Lonelyhearts empowered the West to concentrate on the relationship, traps in career, impact on personality of gender, and associated responses that arouse in a person for his needs fulfillment and to overcome obsession that he experienced in his life (Bloom, 2005). The novel revolves around the main character Miss Lonelyhearts who is male newspaper columnist in New York.

Analysis of the Story Plot and Alter Ego

Miss Lonelyhearts is a presentation of literary and social affairs of 1920s and 1930s era creating progressive changes in the personality of individuals. Miss Lonelyhearts works as an advice columnist; however, response to his column always results in pathetic and depressed comments letter, which de-motivate the Miss Lonelyhearts. Response to Miss Lonelyhearts column always resulted in unendurable emotional pain given by letters of readers. This shows his first alter ego state, when he used to felt terrible burden which made him make him go in deep depression (Bloom, 2005). As a result, he moved towards heavy drinking for suppressing his thoughts and emotions. Change in ego is clearly evident as Miss Lonelyhearts started acquiring negative personality traits. At rare occasions, he indulged in bar fights.

As we move ahead, suspicion turn in the novel occurs when religious perspective controls the perceptive thinking of Miss Lonelyhearts. As a result, he battered Mrs. Doyle on occasion when she tried to seduce him after inviting him at her home. The intricacy is observed, for determination of attitude, to form for Miss Lonelyhearts' religious strivings (Rossi, ...